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Most common Joyo kanji componentsStandard radicals (and their variants)All components and radicals

The Joy o' Kanji Essays

Welcome to Joy o’ Kanji, which will enable you to discover the joy of kanji! Below you’ll find introductions to detailed essays covering every aspect of each Jōyō kanji. Through loads of sample sentences and images containing the character in question, the essays give you the real-world experience you need so you can master kanji. You can download the essays in PDF form. After reading them, you can play games and use flashcards to work with the vocabulary and sentences from the essay.

If a Joy o' Kanji essay is available for a kanji, you will see this badge next to it in search results.

You can also find all kanji with essays available using the special search keyword jokessay:true, and if you know the Joy o' Kanji ID (the number under the kanji in the display below), you can use the special keyword jok:1009.

Unfortunately that feature is not accessible here. Please contact support if you have any questions.

More info about Joy o' Kanji

Joy o' Kanji is a site for true kanji enthusiasts. The brainchild of professional writer and
Japanophile Eve Kushner, Joy o' Kanji provides detailed essays on the etymology, usage and quirks of the Jōyō
kanji.
Once every week or so Joy o' Kanji produces a new essay featuring a single kanji. Reading such an in-depth essay
is a fantastic way to cement a kanji fully in your mind. The name 'Joy o' Kanji' itself is a clever pun on 'Jōyō kanji'.

This page provides a synopsis of all 375 kanji that have so far been featured by Joy o' Kanji. Each section provides links to a kanji's details page on Kanshudo for more information, as well as the ability to purchase and download a full essay (), study the lesson content (), play entertaining study games (), or view the kanji's details on Kanshudo ().

Create Flashcards for the kanji to study with Kanshudo's spaced repetition flashcard
system

View your current Kanji Mastery level for each kanji, as well as a quick
summary of readings and meanings

Download the kanji with readings and meanings for study offline or in another flashcard program

Kanshudo also features synopses of Joy o' Kanji's 'radical notes', free essays on each
of the 214 standard radicals. To find out more visit our radicals page.
For more information on Joy o' Kanji, visit the Joy o' Kanji website ⇗.

With 束, you can create order: Establish binding agreements, promises, and appointments. Pull together unions! Using just one verb, either make a ponytail or govern a nation! If you have keys on a keyring, a cluster of raw noodles, or a bouquet, 束 is a vital kanji. See how bundles of cash have inspired fun idioms. Also learn how a wooden post gave rise to a common term for "short-lived."

Find out how social critics view the fierce work ethic in Japan (some finding it lacking!), and see why the Japanese disdain idleness. Learn to say “His idle lifestyle ruined him,” “He was lazy and irresponsible,” and “Break out of the inertia in your life.” Discover how 惰 and another laziness kanji differ in nuance. See what it means to “devour lazy sleep.” And learn a fun term for a lazy animal.

Learn about the waterfall in Japan, from its role in religion to the use of 滝 as a simile. With great photos of Japanese waterfalls, as well as enticing tidbits about them, the essay could turn you into a waterfall tourist in Japan. One must-see spot: a hot-springs waterfall powered by an active volcano!

For a kanji that appears in relatively few compounds and that means 'marsh,' 'plentiful,' 'to glisten,' and 'benefit' (a range that makes the head spin), 沢 seems to poke its head up in quite a few places. It's the 489th most used kanji in newspapers. That's puzzling, but this essay will reveal the reason. It will also teach you the names of several types of dishes, help you talk about luxury, and put the luster back in your life (if it's missing).

When we trust another (whether a babysitter or a bank) with what we care about most, 託 plays a key role. By using this kanji, we can consign goods and establish trust funds. This character also leads us into a world of bribery and conspiracy! Read about 託 to find out why a bank chose Peter Rabbit, a vegetable thief, as its mascot!

A lack of transparency holds fascinating secrets, and so it is with the muddiness of 濁. This kanji connects to evasive answers, impure hearts, and "muddy streams" in finance, plus muddied sounds, murkiness in the body and mind, and figurative birds that may or may not muddy waterways. Learn about saké production, and find out what "A bad boy drinks tea" could mean!

With 但 you can control others! When it means "provided that you do what I say," 但 enables you to lay down rules for other people's behavior! You can also use it to hedge your bets and cite exceptions to rules, saying things like "Free shipping! Remote islands excluded." Side discussions cover ways of interpreting and representing ただ, as well as the grammar of "if-then" statements.

Find out how 胆 and 肝 (liver) enjoy an incredibly close relationship. They're often interchangeable and collectively serve as a metaphor for profound compatibility. These organs supposedly work together to govern our minds and hearts, with the gallbladder supplying courage. Learn about a long-standing theory that bodily fluids such as bile even determine personality traits.

An altar may be the spiritual center of a Buddhist household, but that doesn't mean it can't be heavily marketed. By studying text and photos used to sell all styles of household altars, you'll become an altar expert. Enjoy colorful photos of temple altars from Malaysia to Japan. Also find out about Edo-era execution methods and how they relate to a figurative expression used today.

Although 稚 means 'immature' or 'childish,' this kanji often represents very young people who are no more to blame for their lack of readiness than half-baked bread is. Learn ways of saying things like "They were too naive to understand." Also discover the context behind kids in a festival procession who wear silk costumes and heavy makeup and who may be called "divine children."

The Kanshudo kanji usefulness rating shows you how useful a kanji is for you to learn.

has a Kanshudo usefulness of , which means it is among the most useful kanji in Japanese.

is one of the 138 kana characters, denoted with a usefulness rating of K. The kana are the most useful characters in Japanese, and we recommend you thoroughly learn all kana before progressing to kanji.

All kanji in our system are rated from 1-8, where 1 is the most useful.
The 2136 Jōyō kanji have usefulness levels from 1 to 5, and are denoted with badges like this: